


Moribund

by WordHunter (Runic_Purple_Panda)



Series: Hydravengers [6]
Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Hydra Natasha Romanoff, Hydra Tony Stark, Iron Man 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-06
Updated: 2017-02-06
Packaged: 2018-09-22 12:15:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9607145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Runic_Purple_Panda/pseuds/WordHunter
Summary: Tony Stark is dying.  Both SHIELD and Hydra would like that not to happen.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Not all of these fics have the actual word of the day in them, but they are certainly inspired by the word. The Word of the Day on Dictionary.com on [Thursday June 8, 2000](http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/2000/06/08/moribund) was _MORIBUND_ – In a dying state; dying; at the point of death.

Tony’s first call, after finding out he was dying, should have been to Pepper, so she could begin quietly preparing the company.  Instead, it’s to Alex.

“We’re sending a doctor over,” Alex said.  “There’s some research in SHIELD that said this might happen, but not that it would be so soon.”

“Oh, thanks for telling me,” Tony said.

“We only just got one of our scientists into that research group,” Alex said.  “We were planning on actually getting the research before telling you about it.”

“I swear, first chance I get, I’m getting JARVIS inside so he can tell me all of SHIELD’s secrets.”

The doctor comes.  The doctor goes.  Nothing can be done.

* * *

Pepper’s already half-way through a rant about him never doing his paperwork, when he grabbed her by the shoulders.

“No, Pepper, listen to me, I’m trying to make you CEO.”

“What?”

He hadn’t yet managed to tell her he was dying, but he’s going to make sure that she can take care of the company.

The woman Pepper brings to oversee the signing (“Natalie Rushman from legal.”) seemed familiar, but he couldn’t really place her, so he assumed he had a one night stand with her at some point.

“I want one,” he told Pepper.

“No,” Pepper said.

He dropped the subject and signed the papers.  He’s more worried about trying to find a way to stop dying, anyway.

The doctor comes again.  The doctor goes again.  Still nothing can be done.

* * *

Tony spent weeks trying to find a solution to the element problem, but failed to find anything that would power the arc reactor without killing him even quicker than the one already there was.

He’d later admit to himself that driving his own race car was a bad idea, especially in his state, but after all the stress of multiple failures, he needed something fun.  And it had been fun.

At least, until the guy with the whips and the knock-off arc reactor showed up.  His suit got damaged a bit, but at least the guy went to prison.  And then died in an explosion.

“Isn’t an explosion a little obvious,” Tony asked over the phone.

“It wasn’t us,” Alex said.

“Body in the cell?”

“Not Vanko.”

“Fuck.”

The doctor comes.  The doctor goes.  Nothing.

* * *

“You’re fired.”

“That’s not your decision to make,” Natalie replied.    She turned to face Fury, handing him something with one hand, while the other makes a symbol behind her back.  A simple, quick, innocuous symbol that anyone with Hydra would be able to identify as, ‘I’m with Hydra.’

And it clicks.  He hadn’t had a one night stand with Natalie.  She’s Hydra, like him.  He’d seen her a few times when he had to go to one of their facilities.  Fury, clearly, didn’t know, or Alex would have mentioned it beforehand.  The Director of SHIELD being a Hydra agent would be something the man would have bragged about, whether or not he had been the one to get him on side or not.

Tony gets assigned a babysitter.  Agent Coulson does not make the same symbol as Agent Natalie.  Tony pointedly doesn’t call Alex at their usual time, and the doctor doesn’t come.

* * *

In the end it’s not Hydra or SHIELD that managed to save him, but Howard Fucking Stark, and isn’t that just wonderful.  Tony’s not happy about that, but at least the man isn’t alive to gloat about saving his ‘greatest creation’.

He used the Stark Expo map to create a new element, and installed it in his arc reactor.  Then he put on the Iron Man suit and went to go save the people at the Stark Expo because Justin Hammer, _yet again_ , had done something incredibly stupid, this time to the War Machine suit.

And also, he let that Vanko nut job reprogram all his drones.

As soon as Tony was done saving them, he was checking with Alex to see if Hammer was one of theirs.  If he wasn’t, Tony was going to make sure an _accident_ found its way into Hammer’s future, because some people were just too stupid to live.

**Author's Note:**

> This one was a pain in the ass to write. Seriously, I had a bunch of the others, including the three after this, already written and waiting to be posted, but this one just didn’t want to be written. I almost scrapped it. So, if you're wondering why it ends so abruptly, that's why.


End file.
